In this LAB note
Question · Hypothesis · Method · Results · What Failed · What We Learned · What Changed at MOMS
Question
Cauliflower and white rice both fill the Body slot of a MOMS shake, at an average of 48 grams and 30 grams. If the Body ingredient is the thick, mild base of the shake, does its dose in grams predict how much carbohydrate the shake carries?
Hypothesis
We expected two things. First, that carbohydrate would climb with dose inside each ingredient, because more mass of a starchy base should mean more starch. Second, that white rice, a grain, would carry more carbohydrate than cauliflower, a brassica, even at a much smaller dose. We expected the first to be the weaker of the two, because the other ingredients in the cup also supply carbohydrate.
Method
We read the 201-recipe MOMS database and kept shakes whose Body slot holds a single ingredient and nothing else: 17 with cauliflower and 10 with white rice (a further 13 recipes list cauliflower or rice together with another Body ingredient and were excluded). For each group we compared dose in grams, total carbohydrate, calories, fat and fiber, and we computed the correlation between Body dose and total carbohydrate within each group. Total carbohydrate comes from the recipe totals in the database; we did not estimate carbohydrate per ingredient from outside tables. For context on rice as a staple starch, we used the published glycemic index tables (Atkinson, Foster-Powell and Brand-Miller, 2008), which report an average glycemic index of 73 ± 4 for boiled white rice and note that rice comes in both high- and low-GI forms. We did not compute glycemic index for any MOMS recipe, and the database does not say whether the rice weight is dry or cooked.
Results
The two groups use different doses and land at different carbohydrate totals. The 17 cauliflower shakes average 48 g of Body (range 19.5 to 90 g) and 37.0 g of carbohydrate, 372 kcal, 10.1 g fat and 6.5 g fiber. The 10 white-rice shakes average 30 g of Body (range 19.5 to 55 g) and 48.3 g of carbohydrate, 392 kcal, 6.8 g fat and 7.4 g fiber. Rice shakes use about 38% less Body mass and carry 11.3 g more carbohydrate. Two recipes show the pattern at its sharpest. EI-W2-WARM-001 (Cozy Glow) uses 90 g of cauliflower with 300 ml soy milk, 55 g blueberry and 25 g carrot, and totals 28.7 g carbohydrate and 387.8 kcal. EY-W2-DETOX-004 (Gentle Purge) uses 25 g of white rice with 195 ml coconut milk, 43 g beet, 60.5 g carrot and 10.6 g dates, and totals 48.8 g carbohydrate and 395 kcal. The cauliflower shake has 3.6 times the Body mass and 20.1 g less carbohydrate. Within each ingredient, dose behaves differently. Across the 17 cauliflower shakes the correlation between grams of cauliflower and total carbohydrate is -0.02, which is effectively zero. Across the 10 rice shakes it is +0.59, in the direction we expected, though 10 recipes is a small base.
What Failed
The ingredient comparison is confounded by body type. Six of the 10 rice shakes belong to a single body type (MI), and the cauliflower shakes spread across six types, so some of the 11.3 g gap may reflect which ingredients each body type is allowed rather than the Body ingredient itself. The one place we can compare inside a type reverses the headline: among EY recipes, the 2 cauliflower shakes average 52.7 g of carbohydrate and the 2 rice shakes average 46.8 g. EY-W3-GUT-008 (Digestive Ease) uses 45 g of cauliflower and reaches 59.0 g of carbohydrate, because 32.5 g of dates, 70 g of kiwi and 60 g of carrot sit beside it. With only 2 recipes per side, that reversal is an observation, not a result. The within-rice correlation of +0.59 rests on 10 recipes and should not be read as a dose-response curve. We also did not test whether any of this shows up in the Score, so the 0.8-point gap in average Score between the groups (15.5 for cauliflower, 14.7 for rice) should not be read as an effect of the Body ingredient.
What We Learned
Grams of Body ingredient is a poor stand-in for carbohydrate. For cauliflower, going from 19.5 g to 90 g does not move the carbohydrate total in a measurable way, because the fruit, the liquid and the protein slot decide it. For rice, a small dose is already a meaningful share of the cup. When we describe a shake by the weight of its base, we are describing texture and volume more than energy.
What Changed at MOMS
We will stop describing Body slot choices by dose and start describing them by role. Cauliflower is treated as bulk and texture with little carbohydrate of its own; rice is treated as a carbohydrate anchor that is sized deliberately. Any recipe that uses rice will also record whether the weight is dry or cooked, so the 30 g figure can be compared across shakes. And when a recipe is revised, we will check carbohydrate against the full recipe total, not against the Body dose.
References
Atkinson FS, Foster-Powell K, Brand-Miller JC. International Tables of Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load Values: 2008. Diabetes Care. 2008;31(12):2281-2283. doi:10.2337/dc08-1239
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